The Montreal-based sportswear brand Moose Knuckles doesn’t take itself too seriously. Past promotional videos have included a “How to care for your parka” clip in which a pretty young woman strips down to her underwear, dons her parka and has a shower. But its latest — a controversial series of politically charged vignettes called “We are the FUQ,” by freelance creative director J. Lee Williams, whose work includes music videos for artists like Hedley and commercials for Coca-Cola — has proven too much for Sports Experts. After numerous complaints about the video on its Facebook page, the retail chain dropped Moose Knuckles products from its stores. We asked Nathalie Atkinson, the Post’s Style editor, culture columnist and a member of the Toronto Film Critics’ Association, to review the seven-minute video. Turns out the profit margin on a $800 parka can buy a lot of production value, if not logic:

Intro

The video opens with a woman’s voice ponderously reciting a call to arms, with reverb and a squeal of feedback. Each segment closes with a blood-red tint washed over the words The FUQ Wants You. What is the FUQ? The “Fédération unilatérale du Québec.” Really, guys, is that the best you’ve got? British clothing brand French Connection UK cornered the market on simpering giggles with acronyms that approximate profanity more than 40 years ago, with FCUK.

“Ammunition”

A white van rounds the bend of a remote forest road that looks like the road to my family’s maple sugar farm in St. Norbert. Double denim Canadian tuxedo. Everyone has good hair and there must’ve been a Groupon because they’re in matching sunglasses. They face off and solemnly nod before the woman in charge steps into the back of the cube van.

A Canadian designer is defending a satirical ad featuring a fictional, semi-nude Quebec terrorist group after a national sporting goods retailer pulled his outerwear brand from its shelves over the “incredibly offensive” video.

“I regret losing those sales, but I don’t regret what I did,” Moose Knuckles founder Will Poho said. “I do not want to be stifled by a very small minority.”

The ad shows a made-up paramilitary army called the Fédération unilatérale du Québec (FUQ) — a parody of the separatist group Front de libération du Québec (FLQ).

“The FUQ is a satirical commentary on the civil unrest in the world today,” Poho said. The designer wrote and produced the seven-minute promotional video for his high-end brand. He said he chose to base the imaginary army in Quebec because the province’s history would make it “more believable.”

“There was no intention to make fun of anybody. I just thought, ‘What if Canada was to go after itself? How would that happen? How would that play out?'” he said. “It would be a bunch of fun-loving kids.”

I’m not initially clear on what’s happening. The H in my name isn’t an accident — French is my mother tongue, I spent several years in French Catholic school in Rouyn-Noranda. When the extended family gathered with their bilingual but non-Québécois husbands around the holiday table, there was strong nationalist sentiment on both sides, often heated, not always cordial. All this to say that after I wondered, “new Nikita episode, maybe?” the van doors swung open and I for a moment thought of the October Crisis, grimly, and that there was a similar kidnapping victim inside.

But no, they’re just buying a van load of weapons, arming themselves! The sexy leader caresses the barrel of a handgun and then fires a rifle. Phew.

Buffalo plaid sightings: 1.

“Rollcall”

Fade in: Some sort of barracks. Then the middle of the forest. A model approximating Gerald McRaney stands in his y-fronts yelling at several rows of shivering ‘recruits’ who are stripped down (they’ve borrowed Miley Cyrus’s best white undies from “Wrecking Ball”). A henchman in a colonel’s hat hands them fatigues. Throughout this and the other videos, there is the flat, nasal narration simulating vintage war propaganda news reels.

Riding crop: 1.

Buffalo plaid sighting: too many to count, since the plaid flannel work shirts are in lieu of standard-issue fatigues. It beats sheer white bras and panties in the freezing cold, so everyone puts them on; they salute the commander who I think is inexplicably still in his underpants, and march off in formation with rifles slung over shoulders.

The women are topless in goalie masks and boxing gear. The sequence has a dreamlike Fight Club quality, jump cuts and slow-motion close-ups of flesh. It’s watchable, if you like that sort of thing. Even if you don’t, you get lots of Internet traffic by bragging that you’ve got topless women boxing. Someone fires a revolver into the night sky.

Buffalo plaid sightings: Couldn’t concentrate, because I wanted to give all the women a decent sports bra. Ouch.

“Recruit”

After the bikinis and rifles, it’s bikinis and hot tubs. And spraying water. Tangled limbs underwater. Somewhere else, in a land with completely different film stock, wannabe-Blofelds are leaning over maps and plastic soldiers. Cut to a model in a parka leaning in a field in a place where there are horses. Are they annexing Alberta, or just headed out to Au Pied de Cochon’s Cabane à Sucre pop-up?

They recap the marching; this time they’re in parkas and the video is processed to simulate the flickering frames of Super 8 footage. It ends with the narrator suggesting that soldiers have to be ready to defend their nation in war as they hoist the Quebec flag. Despite the enormous Quebec flag flapping by a body of water in the desolate winter wind, this part reminds me less of Quebec and more of documentary Arctic Defenders, another grim bit of Canadian history about the battle for Arctic sovereignty and how dozens of native families were forcibly relocated to desolate spots with no shelters or supplies. Fun times, especially for a brand that touts itself as the alternative to Canada Goose that has a sense of humour. I totally feel like buying a parka now.

Trapper hats: 3. Plus a lot of Moose Knuckle insignia and fleur de lys heraldry, Quebec flags and such on their military berets. The Moose Knuckles insignia looks like embroidery scissors.

Besides the brand’s crude name (it’s the slang for male camel toe), Je me souviens when the selling points of garment brands were their clothes.